The present invention relates generally to the field of market research, and in particular, it relates to the use of user behavior to define content offered to that user.
The technique of gathering information about consumer behavior on the internet was set out in commonly-owned U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/226,066, entitled “Method and Device for Publishing Cross-Network User Behavioral Data” filed on 14 Sep. 2005. (the “'066” application), published as U.S. Patent Publication No. 2006-0136528 A1 on Jun. 22, 2006, issued Apr. 6, 2010 as U.S. Pat. No. 7,693,863. That application is incorporated by reference herein for all purposes.
The technique of the '066 Application teaches how information about user behavior on the internet can be gathered. In sum, that application teaches that a behavior module can reside on a user computer, which module can observe and record user behavior in terms of keystrokes, mouse clicks and so on. Also, the behavior module can also observe information about websites visited by the user. In conjunction with software incorporated into the behavior module, data about the web site or web page can be analyzed and the site categorized into one of a set of categories defined by the behavior module. Information identifying the category, as well as information about the user's navigation behavior, such as the when the site was visited, how much time was spent there, and what the user did, can also be gathered by the behavior module. Finally, the behavior module can summarize the information and compact it into a form suitable for transmission, such the form generally known as a “cookie.”
What is not taught by the '066 application, and not seen in the art, is an understanding of how to employ such information to provide content to a user based on what that user wants to see. It remains to the present invention to provide such functionality to the art.